ABOUT two or three weeks ago, Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Enzo Morabito got a call from a Hamptons landlord who wanted advice.

“Last year he was asking $150,000 for [his house during] the summer season,” says Morabito. “He got an offer from someone willing to rent his house from May until, like, Thanksgiving for $100,000.”

The landlord asked Morabito what he should do.

“Take it,” Morabito advised. “Does he have real money?”

“Yes.”

“Take it,” Morabito repeated.

If there’s a lesson in this, it’s that we’ve entered a really good time to be a renter in the Hamptons.

Broker Angela Boyer-Stump of Hampton Country Real Estate has a client whose six-bedroom, 4,200-square-foot house on the beach in Noyac was listed for $200,000 last season. The landlord actually managed to get slightly more than his asking price by splitting up the season and getting $125,000 in rent for August alone. But that was then.

This summer, the house (which is not only on the water but also has a heated pool and mooring rights) is being relisted at $150,000.

There have been price reductions across the board; even cheaper places that rented for $70,000 or $80,000 last season have seen a good $10,000 knocked off their asking price.

While it might be difficult to gauge the rental market this early, when the Corcoran Group recently released its quarterly sales report on the East End, it did not paint a pretty picture. Both prices and volume have fallen dramatically (see story, far right), and brokers and owners are similarly concerned about the rental market.

Of course, while many landlords have adjusted their expectations, others have yet to accept the downturn.

“It’s a very confused market right now,” says Boyer-Stump. “On a $100,000 house, I had a tenant offer $48,000. The landlord wouldn’t even reply. That’s what we’re seeing – a standoff between . . . tenants and landlords. At some point, someone has to say ‘Uncle!’ “

In fact, there have been rampant stories of absurdly low offers on rental properties.

“Across the East End as a whole, rental inventory is up slightly,” says Rick Hoffman of the Corcoran Group. “More people are thinking they’re going to rent their house. Even those who hadn’t in the past are looking at the property as a bit of an investment, and they’re looking to recoup their investment.”

“If you’ve got the money . . . this couldn’t be a better time to buy or rent because the inventory is out there,” says Charles Manger, executive director of the Eastern Long Island office for Brown Harris Stevens.

For bargain-hunters, it might make sense this year (for the first time in a long time) to wait until closer to summer – when landlords get worried that their houses will go unrented.

“At some point, there will have to be some movement or there’ll be a lot of empty houses,” says Boyer-Stump.

But waiting comes with its own perils.

“A lot of people think that if they wait, they can try and get a deal,” says Breitenbach. “But that only works if they really don’t care what they’re going to rent.”

Although every broker we spoke to says that foot traffic has declined from this time last year, most also said that things have picked up in recent weeks.

Renters should do their homework before submitting an offer. If you lowball too much, you likely won’t get a place. But if you make a serious lower offer, you could snag your dream pad.

“There’s a lot of negotiability with the lease if [a tenant is] going to rent for the whole season,” says Hoffman. “Those who are going to commit to a longer term will probably get a better deal on a property.”